


Fall or Forgiveness

by Fair_Feather_Friend



Category: Original Work
Genre: Elves, Forgiveness, Hate Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 14:43:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20027521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fair_Feather_Friend/pseuds/Fair_Feather_Friend
Summary: I can't summarise this without giving away huge spoilers for Autumn Atonement.Two elves with a lot of baggage between them, end up having sex that they definitely wouldn't have in canon.





	Fall or Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YKET](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YKET/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Autumn Atonement](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997626) by [YKET](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YKET/pseuds/YKET). 

> Read YKET's Autumn Atonement, it's amazing. I love the themes of revenge and redemption and also elves. The first few paragraphs are theirs, (but I slanted them to be from Seoras' point of view) the characters are all theirs, and this contains spoilers for the entire story so read Autumn Atonement first. 
> 
> READ IT! 
> 
> This is so much spoilers for all the great plot points.

Forgiveness:

"Why would I choose to return?" I barely breathe. "I hate you."

"No, you don’t." I stare at Jahlwe. "You don’t hate them," he continues, his voice cracking with the effort. "Perhaps you did, at the start, but the longer you lived with them, building the valley, raising the twins, healing the Solvenians, the less you thought about revenge, and the more you wanted to just… enjoy your life." 

He's almost there, and yet not quite. I think of correcting him, and then wonder what the point would be, instead looking out the window once more. 

"This must have scared you, so you found solace in making sure they never found love, but otherwise you let them be happy. Until I came. But even then, after I proved persistent enough, you would have probably tolerated our bond, had it not turned out that I was part Gulurgon. I was a danger to you, because… because it was Gulurgon who had made the emerald pendant by your request." I shudder, not wanting to remember. "You wanted to silence me, but it was not revenge that drove you, simply the wish to stay a part of the family you came to love. You never planned to harm Eltarion, or even Turûvin, it’s just after the pendant was found, you had no choice."

"Seoras, it this true?" Eltarion asks.

Jahlwe's wrong, so very wrong. It was not like that at all. Why would I care about my own life, about enjoyment. I hate them. If he were Gulurgon, he'd have been able to read me. He'd have been better at knowing my motivations. Maybe they weren't the exact same person after all. 

"I heard King Querian was in search of a healer," I finally say. "Perhaps that is where I should be headed."

Eltarion scrambles to his feet, staggering, pain lancing across his face, and it takes everything within me not to rush to his aid. 

"But you want to stay," Eltarion says, meeting my eyes. They are swimming with tears. "I need you."

‘You don’t need me, Eltarion," I reply. "I am leaving you in the hands of an excellent healer." I gesture in Jahlwe’s direction. "And a shrewd advisor."

"What about a friend?"

I gaze out the window, blinking away the tears. We were never friends. It was all deception and lies.

Eltarion touches my arm, lightly. "It is the Harvest Festival in two weeks… would you stay that long?"

A time for families. For love. I can't. I shake my head. "I don’t deserve it."

"I need you," Eltarion says again, not moving away. "Do you think I could have done any of this without you? You've had as much a part of healing this land as I have."

I'd expected to die for all that I had done. Yet this was to be my punishment, to live with the pain, the knowledge of the depths I would fall to, the people I could destroy. How was I not so different from them after all?.

"Beňoun, would be proud of you."

Those words choke me. "You have no right to speak of him. You did not know him."

"Then tell me about him. Keep his memory alive. Let me listen as you listened to me."

I glare at him. It's much too late. "I only did that for revenge. So you could not move on. It was cruelty not kindness."

"You saved me, time after time after time. You were always there. Through the darkest days and loneliest hours. You're Beňoun's legacy. That kindness. Every person you cared for, every wound you tended, every one you taught, every ailment you soothed. You've always been there for me."

"Don't you understand, I hate you. I wanted to see you suffer."

"No suffering you could have inflicted upon me would be worse than I deserve. And yet you did not."

His lips meet mine and it's a gentle, chaste kiss in front of the others. We were never this. Why doesn't my skin crawl with revulsion? Why amn't I pushing him away.

"You helped me through my grief and pain, helped me become a better person, you lived by example."

"It's always about you, isn't it?" I spit. He wraps his arms around me, holding me close and I let him.

"It was you that encouraged me to pray for Turûvin's return. Who saved him from a millennia of torment. Who helped him heal. When all others shunned him you did not. You guided him as surely as you guided me. It would have been easier to drive us apart. To have us destroy each other."

I hate him. I hate them. He's still looking at me with pity and something else and he won't let me go and I'm not even trying to get away.

"Can you forgive yourself?"

"What for?" He's never noticed the guilt I carry before. And for a moment I think perhaps he'll voice my thoughts but then he doesn't. 

He kisses me again and this is never what we were. There was never any room in his heart for anyone but Gulurgon and none in mine save for revenge.

I don't want this. I hate him. I hate him!

"For growing to like us." He's just repeating Jahlwe. He hasn't noticed at all. "To feeling at home. To becoming part of our family. For never being able to enact your revenge. Never speaking his name, while helping us idolise one of his murderers. For being driven mad with grief."

"I wasn't mad. I planned all of this."

"This isn't you, Seoras."

"How would you know me? Do you even know anything about me?"

"I know an elf who has sacrificed his entire life to heal a wasteland and turn it prosperous, seeking nothing in return. I know an elf that sacrificed his entire life, his joy, his happiness, to set both me and Turûvin on a path of good. Who watched and ensured at no point did either of us backslide. An elf who was a friend, there in the darkest hours for us. I know a friend who was always there for me, and it troubles me to know that I was never there for him. I know a healer who cared for my children as if they were his own. You are Beňoun's legacy. All that is good that is said of him is true of you too." 

I can't stand the sound of his name on Eltarion's tongue. "I hate you. You should have died, not him."

"If you want our deaths just ask for them. But Jahlwe is innocent, as are the twins."

I stare daggers at him. 

"I was blind. Selfish. I was so lost in my pain I never saw yours. How can I make it right?"

"You can't!" I snarl, and I find my mouth on his, hot and fierce, and this time I probably initiated. "I hate that you get it all. Your best friend redeemed. Your lover returned. A kingdom. A family. After everything you did."

"I hate you." I tell him as I tear at his clothes, the kisses are hard, brutal, and he gives every bit as much as he gets.

I want to hurt him. I want to mark him. I want... I don't want him. I never have.

This is the final betrayal.

When the tears come I can't stop them, centuries, millennia of grief, all of it crashing through me. I'm going to drown in it and he holds me. And I hate him all the more for that compassion.

"It's yours too." He strokes my back, his touch soothing as it has no right to be. "Everything we've built is because of you. Everything I have."

I sob until there's no tears left and he with me.

"Seoras." He says my name like a caress. "I need you."

It's never been like this. 

"I love you." He murmurs into my hair and I'm all too aware that it's nothing like he feels for Jahlwe. He's not in love with me, nor am I with him.

I'm not sure when the others left, not even sure what we're doing, or why, I've never wanted this. Never wanted his lean muscles beneath me, his hot mouth on mine. Never wanted his hands on me, knowing just where to touch. Never wanted those gasps, to know this intimate beauty of seeing him come completely undone.

It's just the physical. Revenge of a different sort.

"Jahlwe..." to my surprise I am the one that breathes his name, not Eltarion.

"He'll understand."

"I hope he doesn't. I hope he hates you for this betrayal."

"He already gave his blessing."

How? I don't ask. "We're never doing this again. I hate you."

He kisses my jaw and I sigh.

"I'm still leaving." It will destroy me to see them together, happy, in love. It already drove me to do unthinkable horrors.

"You could ask me to send Jahlwe away."

"And would you? With him your soulmate reborn? Why? So you can both live miserably apart. It's no less than you deserve."

"Then ask."

"And what? You'll leave him for me? Give up the soulmate you've spent your entire life pining for, for me."

"Three thousand years. I don't want to lose you."

"You never had me, Eltarion. I'm going to fuck you," he startles at the harshness of the word, but doesn't protest, "and then I'm leaving." 

And I do just that. Is there revenge in the ways I can make him scream, the heights of ecstasy we reach together, of each mark I leave on him. We spend the night fucking into exhaustion and I make sure everyone hears him. That Jahlwe will see every single mark upon him and know what we did. 

Those on me are just my penance for this betrayal.

Eltarion's beautiful, even in sleep. I gather my things, as he dozes, utterly sated, upon the bed. He has no right to look so peaceful. 

"I will never forgive you." I lie.

I do not say goodbye.


End file.
